Missing
by Floating On A Thought
Summary: She feels so empty, dead and useless. Her love is gone, and how can she struggle through this world alone? Where can she find a reason to get up in morning, to continue on living?


_I don't own Naruto – Masashi Kishimoto does._

Missing

She lay on her side, knees pulled up to her chest, and her arms wrapped around them. Her eyes were wide open, and water was pouring down her cheeks. Her face was crumpled, and she rocked gently back and forth. The small, usually unnoticeable white lines around her eyes and mouth were increasingly more visible; lines created by a life of laughter and love, were now marred by grief.

Her normally impeccable appearance was haggard and ugly. Her kimono was wrinkled due to her abrupt landing on the futon, and it was bunched up around her thighs. The long, elegant sleeves were creased and being held tightly by their owner. Her hair had fallen out of its normally perfect style, and the long crimson strands hung messily over her face and spilled over the pillow like a puddle of blood.

Her bare feet kicked and snaked over the bed, silently communicating her sheer flood of emotions that had ran over the brim of her tolerance level. Her hands were viciously fisting and squeezing the pale blue fabric she wore, yet it stayed in tact.

The composed and regal princess had been reduced to a hurt woman who felt like she had died.

Inside her mind, she was screaming.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! It wasn't true, it couldn't be! He had sworn not to! He had promised, and he always kept his promises! Always! Never, ever had he broken one. She trusted him, and she knew it couldn't be true! He was a man of his word. She had placed her life in his hands more than once, and he had prevailed. Never, ever would he leave her. He couldn't leave her alone. Never alone.

She hated being alone. He couldn't leave her alone! She needed him to breathe, eat, sleep, laugh, smile, love, _live_. She couldn't live without him. No, no, no. She needed him. His presence soothed her, excited her, enthralled her, playfully annoyed her, lifted her, supported her, and pushed her. She needed him to survive. She needed his constant love and passion.

Physically, her head was slowly shaking, and she had begun to sob quietly.

The tears simply ran faster, and she felt like her chest had been sliced open with the bluntest knife possible, her ribs had been snapped open and her heart was being ripped out with a sadistic slowness, yet it was never lessening. The pain simply multiplied with every second – that felt like a long, long lifetime, one that never ended, only when it did another one began – and built up and built up until she felt like she would explode; only she didn't. Then the pressure continued to rise, each miniature explosion only providing fuel for the large one that was sure to happen.

She began to take gasping, frantic breaths that didn't elevate her desperation for peace, only increased the need for it, until she was hyperventilating with no product. Her chest burned, and she moved a stiff hand to it, clawing at the material in the way then at bare skin, mindlessly searching for the cause to her pain, yet finding nothing.

She had never felt anything like this before, nothing had ever come close to this – not even the aftermath of the miscarriage of her second child had felt like this, and that had felt like the world had ended. She had wept then for days, and only after many months did the feeling of worthlessness and self-hatred begin to lessen.

The only thing she could compare this to was if life itself had ceased to exist, as if every single thought that every single person in the whole of the past, and every thing that was to be had been erased. Her whole meaning for living had been cruelly yanked from life to death, and she felt so empty.

When she had been told, she had dashed out of the room, the sudden crying of her son overshadowed by her own mind-blowing grief. She had ignored the fingers that had tried to cling to her, the need her own child displayed for comfort. But she couldn't, because she had no soothing words and actions to give.

No one was going to calm and support her – there was no one left. She was alone in a sea of half known people and children. The brother of her husband – the only man she could trust who was living. But he wasn't enough. Her father was dead, lost to war, as was her sister. Her old clan was no longer her own, ruled by cousins she did not know. Her best friend was lost to the war, as was so many others. Her son was too young, and the very hidden village her husband had sacrificed himself for shunned her.

There was no glory in sacrifice, only pain and ungratefulness. She had saved so many lives by damning herself, but she knew deep within she would never get an ounce of gratitude. She had come to accept her own burden, yet she could and would never accept his.

He should never have died! He had left her, albeit unwillingly, and she wished with all her heart she had been there. She loved him so, so much. Her heart could have burst on an ordinary day with her love of him, and she prayed and wished she had had one last minute to wrap herself around him and smother him with her emotions while absorbing his own. One last minute in his presence.

She would fight for it, fight for her moment, fight for his life. She wished she had fought more, and for a few seconds she was drowned in regrets and wish-she-had's.

By God, she loved Hashirama so much, and he was gonegonegone. He was _dead_, and she was alone, and she was the living dead, as he was GONE.

She let out a mourning wail, and burrowed deeper into her sheets. She was empty, her life force had been consumed by Death's greedy mouth. She was an false egg, a puppet, a husk, a shadow.

That was why she froze and her heart stopped when a warm and familiar arm drooped lazily over her body, heat was felt against her back, and moist breath seeped into the back of her neck.

She didn't dare to hope, since it was pointless.

She hated herself. He was gone.

No wishes of her mind would change that.

She was alone.

_Do not go gentle into that good night,  
>Old age should burn and rage at close of day;<br>Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  
>Because their words had forked no lightning they<br>Do not go gentle into that good night._

_Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  
>Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,<br>Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  
>And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,<br>Do not go gentle into that good night._

_Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
>Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,<br>Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_And you, my father, there on the sad height,  
>Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.<br>Do not go gentle into that good night.  
>Rage, rage against the dying of the light.<em>

-Dylan Thomas

**I was in a depressing mood.**

**x**


End file.
